


mother always knows best, hear her voice in my head

by OverlyCheerfulRat



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, Delusions, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Past Child Abuse, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverlyCheerfulRat/pseuds/OverlyCheerfulRat
Summary: Mal thought she wasn't home, but she's starting to think she is.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	mother always knows best, hear her voice in my head

At first, she is alone in the room. It isn't big, but it isn't small, and it almost looks like a hotel. Except the beds are nailed to the floor and there is no other furniture, there are bars on the window, the mirror is warped plastic, and there is writing on the walls. Scratched in and painted over, painted with blood or worse and scrubbed off, but still there, so many years of people without pen or paper and too many thoughts to keep in their heads.

They call her Bertha, but her name is Mal, and she answers only to that. She reads the words on the walls, she listens to the doctors in the halls, she sits on her bed and waits and waits and waists and waits and waits and

She wants to see her mother, but no one listens when she asks. She wants to leave her room, and they tell her she can go to the dayroom if she's good for a week. Mal knows how to be good, she can be so good so so very good for Mama, good for the doctors too. They aren't doctors, they say, just orderlies, but they wear blue scrubs and white coats like doctors do on TV, so she calls them doctors.

They let her go to the dayroom. It is big, and there are big windows made of strong double-paned glass, and tables bolted to the floor. Six people are there, sitting alone or in pairs, and only one of them looks up when she walks in, a girl with curly hair and drug-bright eyes. She is shuffling a deck of tarot cards, never never reading them, just shuffling again and again. 

Mal sits next to her, and the girl speaks to her shadow instead of her, says her name is Celia and that they let her keep her cards as long as she doesn't read them, saying that her father gave them to her, saying that everyone here is nice. Mal looks at them and thinks that Celia is wrong or lying.

She is good, though, so good be good for Mama good girl, and she never has to be locked in her room again. The Scottish boy does, the loud one who Mal thought was a girl at first, because of the bloodstains down his thighs. She finds out that it isn't menstrual blood, he just scratches so deeply into his skin that it doesn't have time to scab over before he pulls the wounds open again. The doctors tell her it's silly to think someone is a girl if they have bloodstained pants, because of course they'll give them pads when they need them. They put bandages on Harry's legs and arms, too, but he just takes them off.

Harry screams and fights the doctors and hurts himself, and Mal thinks that she shouldn't be here with him, he is insane and she is not, she is her mother's good little girl. He scares her at first and then he makes her angry, so she starts watching the people next to him instead, the tiny girl with a hard, unsmiling mouth, and the big happy boy who doesn't know where they are. 

She sees that Uma is in charge of everyone but especially Harry and Gil, sees that Uma isn't crazy- just like her, normal and rational just like her. So Mal talks to her. She introduces herself, just the way her mother taught her to, and she is proud of how well she does it because she has never practiced. She tells Uma this, too, that she has never met new people before, and Uma's hard mouth turns soft. She tells Mal to come sit with her, and Mal does, Mal knows how to listen and obey. 

Uma sits next to Mal, and Harry is cross-legged on the floor at her feet. Mal watches him, scared, but he just rests his head against Uma's skinny legs and closes his wild eyes as she strokes his hair. He's just like a dog, Mal thinks, and she has never seen a real live dog but she knows they are loyal and good so she has nothing to fear from a boy who is like a dog. 

"You're safe here," Uma tells her, and Mal nods, because she has seen the locks on the doors that keep all the bad people out. Her mother kept the doors locked, kept her safe inside with her. "Nobody's gonna hurt you," Uma promises, and Mal can't breathe for excitement, because she has never had that assurance before. Her mother had to hurt her when she was bad.

Gil is big and strong, and Mal touches his arm to feel the muscles under his skin. He hold things gently so they don't break, even though she sees how easily he could crush them if he wanted to, and his gaze is unfocused. He plays pretend games with Celia, listens to the stories Uma tells with rapt attention, forgets everyone's name but grins at all of them when he sees them.

Jay is strong, too, and he scowls at Mal the first time she sits next to him. He doesn't like anyone except Carlos, the little boy who follows after him like a duckling and cries when people raise their voices. Jay is big for his age, seventeen, and Carlos is small for his, fourteen. Mal doesn't know how old she is, so she doesn't know if she's big or small, but she likes Jay and Carlos. She likes everyone here.

When the new girl comes to be her roommate, Mal wonders how long she's been here. The girl, who is so skinny she looks half-dead, says her name is Evie, holds her head high like she's royalty, tells Mal that she's a princess. They stay up late that night, Mal listening raptly to Evie's stories and feeling really special, being friends with a real princess.

Even though she's a princess, Evie is nice and sits with everyone in the dayroom, and she fits right in. She says the doctors are royal guards, says they're in a castle, and Mal thinks she might be a little crazy but doesn't care. Harry says he'd rather be on a pirate ship, and when they decide it can be both, Evie holds a plastic spoon like a scepter, Harry a plastic knife like a sword, and no one cares that her hand trembles and he has dried blood under his close-trimmed nails.

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea what i'm doing


End file.
